Princesses Behaving Badly

by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie

  In public life, Elizabeth was a doting mother and a strong political force, even after the death of her husband, the reportedly cruel Count of Nadasdy. It appears that her murderous activities came to light only about 1609, when she began preying on noblewomen; in fact, most of the victims named in court testimonies were related to Elizabeth by blood or marriage. Though she had a reputation as a hard taskmistress, she enjoyed a steady supply of young noblewomen from poor families—years of war had left many families with more daughters than they could marry off.

  Despite the stunning charges against her, not to mention the political factions who would have loved to see her executed, Elizabeth was never convicted of any crime. Three of her servants/accomplices were executed, as was a local woman accused of being a witch in Elizabeth’s service. Elizabeth was punished, however, but it was her family, not a court, that decided to incarcerate her. She was locked in her bedchamber, the door bricked up, with only a small slot for delivering meals. She died on August 21, 1614.

  MARIA I OF PORTUGAL

  Queen Maria I of Portugal, whose madness was of a religious inclination, terrified the residents of her palace by moaning “Ai, Jesus, Jesus!” at all hours of the day and night.

  But she wasn’t always like that. Born in 1734, Maria inherited the throne from her father in 1777. Her first act was to kick out the marquis of Pomba, whom her father had allowed free rein to imprison and execute members of the nobility whenever he felt threatened. From then on, she was regarded as a wise queen. And even when faced with the deaths of five loved ones within three months, in 1788, she bore up with grace and strength. But in 1791, heredity caught up with her.

  Maria came from a long line of anxious, twitchy, mentally ill royals. Her grandfather, Philip V of Spain, was tortured by the belief that he was being consumed by fire from within; he refused to cut his hair or toenails and claimed that his feet were different sizes. Her uncle, Ferdinand VI, refused to wash or shave, banged his head against the wall for hours, and refused all solid foods. And Maria’s father was plagued by claustrophobia, the result of surviving a massive earthquake that destroyed his palace and killed more than 100,000 people. From an early age, Maria had what contemporaries termed a “gloomy temperament” and was “subject to nervous afflictions,” anxiety attacks, and fears for her eternal soul.

  With the death of Maria’s confessor, a quiet man who could calm her fears, a new priest was appointed to safeguard her. A man of the cloth of the hellfire and damnation variety, he could not have been less suited to the task, only fueling Maria’s anxieties that she and her loved ones were doomed. The revolution in not-too-distant France, which had stripped the Bourbon king of his powers, also did little to soothe her terror. In 1789, she banned the editor of the Lisbon Gazette from printing any more stories about the bloodshed abroad.

  By October 1791, Maria was plagued by nightly panics that kept her from sleeping; she complained of pains in her stomach and throat and refused to eat. Two months later, doctors were called to treat her worsening condition with a good bleeding. The experience only terrified the poor queen even more.

  On February 2, 1792, Maria began howling during an opera performance. That week her foreign minister wrote to the Portuguese ambassador to England: “It is with great sadness that I inform you that Her Majesty is suffering from a melancholic affliction which has descended into insanity, into what is feared to be a total frenzy.” The minister asked for Dr. Francis Willis, the famous Lincolnshire doctor who attended the unfortunate King George III of Britain during his bouts of insanity. Willis could claim success—he had “cured” the king at his private asylum after only a few months (though George III would go permanently mad in 1811). While waiting for Willis to arrive, court physicians treated Maria the only way they knew how: she was bled, forcibly dunked in waters at a therapeutic spa, and, because she refused medicine orally, held down and given enemas. When Willis arrived, he demanded full control over the queen’s treatment, for which the Portuguese crown paid £20,000 (more than $1.5 million in today’s currency). His brutal regimen was no more enlightened than that of the court doctors, although he did suggest a reprieve from the daily masses and religious pageantry that seemed to exacerbate her condition.

  By this time Maria’s son Prince João, a timid and uneducated ruler, had taken control of the country. While Maria sank into depression and madness, Portugal, burdened by João’s cowardly leadership, fell prey to Napoleon Bonaparte. In November 1807, the French emperor’s army marched into Lisbon. The royal family fled, with mad Maria bundled into a sedan chair and then forcibly dumped into the galley that rowed her to the flagship. Three months later, she and her family sailed into the harbor in Rio. Maria was packed off to a Carmelite convent, where she died in 1816.

  JUANA “LA LOCA”

  Juana la Loca, or Joanna the Mad, was probably not really insane. But for those who wanted to control the future queen of Castile—that is, her husband, her father, and her son—it was convenient to let everyone believe that she was.

  Born in 1479, Juana was the daughter of the Reyes Católicos, Queen Isabella of Castile and King Fernando of Aragon, the powerful monarchs of two independent kingdoms. She was beautiful, with long auburn hair and clear blue eyes; conversant in Latin, French, and a host of Iberian languages; and clever, pious, and a stickler for formal court etiquette. In short, the perfect princess. In 1496, at age 16, she married Philip the Handsome, the 17-year-old duke of Flemish Burgundy, in a political union that brought together the Hapsburgs and her family, the Trastámaras.

  Juana loved her husband, and he loved a lot of other women. Still, the couple produced six children in eight years, thus securing their own dynasty. In 1500, the unexpected deaths of three of Juana’s siblings left her first in line for the Castile crown, and it was around this time that the seeds of her later “madness” were planted.

  Despite being a princess, Juana had little money of her own; Philip held the purse strings, meaning that he controlled her household and, soon enough, her official affairs. When Juana seemed poised to rebel against his authority, Philip’s courtiers began spreading gossip about her. Juana always had a mercurial, hysterical temperament, a fault her husband’s courtiers exaggerated, claiming that she was insanely jealous, would agree to anything Philip said, and spent hours in the bath with her female Moorish slaves. But Queen Isabella, Juana’s indomitable mother, was aware of Philip’s power play and knew he did not have Spanish interests at heart. Though rumors of Juana’s “ill health” were spreading, Isabella’s last will reaffirmed her daughter’s rights as successor and included directives to prevent Philip from stealing the Castilian crown.

  Nevertheless, on Isabella’s death in November 1504, Phillip did just that, proclaiming himself king of Castile. He then locked up his wife and drew up a document that would allow him to rule in her stead, forging her signature. He and his entourage continued to claim that “mad” Juana was unfit to rule. Two years later, when Philip died, Juana’s father found it useful to keep up the pretense—he had his own designs on his late wife’s kingdom.

  On the surface, Juana’s actions didn’t help matters. Eight months pregnant at the time of Philip’s death, she demanded that his body be buried in faraway Granada, at great personal and financial cost. The decision played right into the hands of her political rivals, making her mental state appear questionable and tallying with earlier claims that she loved her husband a bit too much. While the funeral procession was en route, rumors blossomed that Juana couldn’t bear to be parted from Philip’s decaying corpse, that she opened his coffin to kiss his rotting feet, that she believed he would be resurrected.

  There is no evidence that Juana ever caressed her dead husband. And her decision to bury him in Granada was actually quite shrewd—Southern Spain was home to the only political faction that might be willing to back her. The trip got her away from her husband’s Hapsburg relations and advisors, who were clamoring for her to surrender the throne. It also reinforced he
r right to rule Castile in the minds of those who witnessed the coffin-bearing pilgrimage through the country.

  Unfortunately, the gambit didn’t work. Her authority was already too far eroded, and Juana was easily outfoxed by her crafty father (not for nothing was he one of the models for Machiavelli’s Prince). Under the guise of loving patriarch, Fernando made sure everyone believed Juana was toting around Philip’s corpse because she was insane, and he began to assume control of her household, just as Philip had done early in their marriage. In 1507, he took over her government, and in 1509 Juana was permanently confined to the castle at Tordesillas. When Fernando died in 1516, Juana’s son Charles then kept up the fiction of his mother’s madness.

  Juana’s behavior may not have always been normal, but neither were the circumstances in which she was forced to live. Ultimately her family’s propaganda had done its job. Juana died at Tordesillas on April 12, 1555, and is still remembered as Juana la Loca, Spain’s sad, mad queen.

  Elisabeth of Austria

  THE PRINCESS WHO WORE A MEAT MASK

  DECEMBER 24, 1837–SEPTEMBER 10, 1898

  THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE

  If Elisabeth, empress of Austria, ever told anyone she was busy washing her hair, chances are they believed her. For one thing, her hair was incredibly long. She wore it piled up in a braided crown, which had the effect of making her “head too big for the rest of her figure,” according to one contemporary courtier. Washing this mass of to-the-floor auburn locks was like a military maneuver, requiring dozens of egg yolks and 20 bottles of the “best French brandy,” according to her valet. She later added pressed onions and Peruvian balsam to the shampoo mix.

  The nightly brushing took place over several hours and had its own rituals: a white cloth was laid over the floor, and the hairdresser was clothed entirely in white. After he’d brushed and arranged Elisabeth’s hair, he gathered up the strands that had fallen out and counted them. If there were too many, the empress would “become disturbed.” She saved them, marking the date that each one fell. Of course, micromanaging one’s hair care makes sense when it’s the only thing you’re allowed any control over.

  FROM PRINCESS TO EMPRESS

  Growing up in a sprawling Bavarian country home, Princess Elisabeth—or Sisi, as everyone called her—had a wild childhood. She stole fruit from neighbors’ orchards and wrote treacly romantic poetry about nature and virtuous maidens. Sometimes she and her father would disguise themselves as peasants and perform a song-and-dance act outside beer gardens for pennies. And why not? It was her sister Helene who was being groomed for a grand match to Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, a cousin on their mother’s side.

  But it was beautiful, free-spirited Elisabeth, then 15 years old, who caught the eye of the handsome 23-year-old emperor. They met at a family reunion, and at a ball the next day, he requested every dance with her. It was just like one of the fairy tales Elisabeth loved to read, except it was happening to her and she was terrified. Within days, Franz Josef asked for her hand. She wept wildly in her mother’s arms, crying that of course she loved him, but “if only he were not the emperor.”

  Elisabeth was hurriedly given an education in everything from history to etiquette. She was constantly surrounded by courtiers, dressmakers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, and ambassadors—overwhelming for anyone, let alone a high-strung girl who craved her freedom. On April 24, 1854, the two lovebirds married, and Elisabeth became empress of Austria and queen of Hungary. She cried like a child, and with good reason. The Austro-Hungarian Empire that she now ruled was a muddle of anarchists, abdications, and assassinations, not to mention stifling and sometimes bizarre court etiquette. Elisabeth was, by both temperament and education, ill-equipped to handle it.

  She was certainly no match for her unsympathetic motherin-law. When the imperial marriage was consummated two days after the wedding, Archduchess Sophia was the first to know. After the woman remarked on her daughter-in-law’s “yellow teeth,” Elisabeth would never open her mouth to smile and barely opened it to speak. Not that there was anyone to talk to anyway. Elisabeth was permitted to mingle with only a few families, and she had almost no friends. Moreover, her new fame meant that she couldn’t so much as buy a pair of gloves at a shop without police protection. She chafed against it all; in time, her hatred of her motherin-law would blossom into an obsession that lasted until the archduchess’s death in 1872.

  When Elisabeth became pregnant, any remaining freedom she’d enjoyed was wrenched away. In March 1855, at age 17, she gave birth to a girl, who was named Sophia by the archduchess for the archduchess. The girl was then taken away and placed under her grandmother’s care. The imperial nursery was outfitted with staff chosen by the archduchess and had the added benefit of being located on the same floor as her apartments. But though Elisabeth later complained about being kept from her children, she probably didn’t mind very much. Being relieved of the stresses of motherhood allowed her to spend more time on her favorite hobby: cultivating her beauty.

  FAIREST OF THEM ALL

  If Elisabeth had been a character in a fairy tale, she would have been the one saying “Mirror, mirror on the wall.” Her manic pursuit of physical perfection was classic image-disorder behavior. Unable to control most aspects of her life, she turned to the one thing she could manage: her appearance.

  Along with the elaborate hair-care regimen, Elisabeth starved herself to preserve her tiny waist, which measured only about 18 inches, freakishly small even by the corseted standards of the day. She showed it off by having herself sewn into her riding clothes and wearing chamois leather undergarments to provide warmth without adding bulk. She insisted on weighing herself twice a day. If she exceeded her self-imposed limit of 110 pounds (on a 5-foot-8-inch frame), then she immediately put herself on a starvation diet of oranges, raw meat juice, and egg whites mixed with salt. During her pregnancies, she found her body disgusting and hated to be seen in public; after each birth, she would become obsessed with regaining her figure and followed a starvation diet and extreme exercise. By 1875 she was sleeping with hot towels wrapped around her waist to keep slim; though she was then 38 years old and mother of four children, her waist still measured no more than 20 inches. She remained rail thin, given to crash diets of, say, only grapes or milk and violet-flavored sorbet.

  Throughout her life, Elisabeth exercised incessantly, walking for five or six hours a day, fencing, and riding horses. To keep her muscles supple, she had a Swedish masseur work on her with a special lotion of alcohol, glycerin, and “ox-gall” (cow bile, basically). She was also manic about cleanliness and hygiene. She had a bath installed in her dressing rooms so that she could plunge into cold water every morning. Later in life she frequently bathed in warm olive oil to keep her skin supple and soft. If she were near the coast, she’d have seawater brought in and warmed for her bath.

  These punishing beauty and fitness routines became even more excessive under stress. When at just 20 years old, she lost her daughter Sophia to the measles, Elisabeth refused to eat and seemed to be intentionally starving herself to death. She rallied after becoming pregnant for a third time in the hope that the child would be a son and she’d never have to deal with that baby business again. After Crown Prince Rudolph’s birth in 1858, she threw herself right back into exercise. She had a gymnasium installed in her dressing room, complete with parallel bars and rings; the equipment was packed up and transported whenever she traveled.

  As she grew older, Elisabeth’s obsession with outdoor exercise and frequent crash diets began to take a toll on her skin, prompting her to go to radical measures to preserve it. Long before Lady Gaga donned meat as fashion, Elisabeth was sleeping in a silk face mask lined with raw veal as a remedy for freckles. Or she would coat her face in purified honey for several hours, following that up with a paste of fresh strawberries muddled with petroleum jelly. She traveled with a coterie of special Jersey cows, which she felt gave especially pure milk; she used their cream, mixed with a paste of lily b
ulbs, as a lotion. Of course, given that many cosmetics in the nineteenth century were made with lead and arsenic, she might’ve been better off.

  UNHAPPILY EVER AFTER

  Curiously, despite the attention lavished on her looks, Elisabeth bristled at anyone actually looking at her, hiding her face behind a leather fan or parasol. She seemed to see herself as a goddess whose beauty was not for mortal eyes, as if she feared people’s gaze would somehow destroy it. This attitude tallied with her fascination with the Greek language, classical gods and heroes, writing and reciting poetry, and fairy tales. She also began to obsess over the idea of being the most beautiful woman in the world, collecting scrapbooks filled with pictures of women whom she considered her rivals. “Life will be worthless to me when I am no longer desirable,” she’s alleged to have said more than once.

  Elizabeth’s eccentricities affected several aspects of her personal life, but one of the most salient was the deterioration of her marriage. The emperor was infatuated with his young wife but was mystified by her, too. He was practical; she was romantic and prone to jealousy. He clung to etiquette; she was used to being with people like her mother, who kept her dogs on her lap during dinner, killing their fleas and depositing the dead insects on her plate. Ultimately, Franz Josef never understood his wife, and that deeply frustrated her. He also refused to acknowledge that the girl he’d married had blossomed into a clever young woman with a quick mind and sympathetic understanding of international politics. He frequently rebuffed her efforts to offer advice, disregarding what was often sound counsel.

  As time went on, sex became a problem, too. Disgusted as she was by her body during pregnancy, Elisabeth was terrified of having more children. After Rudolf was born, she ended all intimate contact with her husband; abstinence also flattered her self-image as an unsullied goddess, desired but unattainable. By withholding sexual favors, though, she had to face the very real fear that Franz Josef would find another woman. And in 1860, her worst fears were realized: after being diagnosed with a venereal disease (likely gonorrhea), 23-year-old Elisabeth realized that her husband had been unfaithful. She took off traveling, the first of what would be a lifetime of trips to escape the Austrian court and Franz Josef, who bankrolled her peripatetic lifestyle without complaint.